Document 19 of 39.
Copyright 1998 Associated Press
AP Worldstream
July 11, 1998; Saturday
00:51 Eastern Time
SECTION: International news
LENGTH: 523 words
HEADLINE: Chinese police detain at least six dissidents
BYLINE: CHARLES HUTZLER
DATELINE: BEIJING
BODY:
Police detained at least six Chinese democracy campaigners in a crackdown
exiled dissidents said proves U.S. President Bill Clinton left
China without securing progress on human rights.
The six, veterans of past democracy movements, have tried to set up
a political party to challenge the Communist Party's monopoly on power. Their
push coincided with Clinton's
China trip and his less confrontational appeals to Chinese leaders to improve human
rights.
Police began the wave of detentions Friday morning, taking Wu Gaoxing from his
home in eastern Zhejiang province's Taizhou city, dissident groups in Hong Kong
and the United States said.
Around 8 p.m. Friday, 250 kilometers (150 miles) to the northwest in Hangzhou
city, police swarmed over the home of Wang Youcai and led away Wang, Wang
Peijian and Cheng Fan, the groups said.
The U.S.-based Chinese Democratic Justice Party said Wang Youcai's wife
reported that police detained two other people visiting her husband but whom
she
didn't recognize.
In separate raids on their Hangzhou homes, police took away Zhu Yufu and Wang
Donghai, the Chinese Democratic Justice Party said.
Police confiscated notebooks, tapes, at least one computer and manifestos and
literature for the China Democracy Party, according to the
U.S.-based dissidents and the Hong Kong-based Information Center of Human
Rights and Democratic Movement in China.
Wang Youcai, Wang Peijian and one other dissident announced June 25, the start
of Clinton's nine-day China tour, that they wanted to set up the China
Democracy
Party and would register the group with authorities as required by law.
Since then Wang Youcai, Zhu Yufu and another dissident were each detained at
least once before Friday's clampdown. They were released with warnings to stop
campaigning for the party and authorities have refused to register the group.
In reporting the detentions, the
exiled groups criticized Clinton's China policy as a failure. Clinton used his
trip to try to showcase a more modern, tolerant China to a skeptical American
public while cajoling Chinese leaders to allow more dissent.
''This is equivalent to giving Clinton a box on the
ears,'' the Information Center said in a statement. It added that the
detentions ''prove Clinton returned home from his China tour empty-handed.''
''What we said about President Clinton's policy of constructive engagement with
China was accurate, that the Chinese government will not work with the free
world to improve
human rights because they are a brutal communist dictatorship,'' said Lian
Shengde, a student leader of the Tiananmen Square democracy demonstrations in
1989 and now the head of the Washington-based
Free China Movement.
Like Lian, most of the detained dissidents took part in the 1989 protest
movement. Wang Youcai, Wang Peijian and Cheng Fan were students in Beijing.
Wang Donghai and Wu Gaoxing staged sympathy protests in Hangzhou.
Wang Youcai spent four years in prison and Wang Donghai and Wu Gaoxing three
years in the nationwide crackdown that
followed the military's brutal quelling of the protests in Beijing.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: July 11, 1998
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